2023 Epcot Food & Wine Festival: My Favorites

The Epcot Food & Wine festival is always such a fun one. From July 27th to November 18th, guests were able to “travel” around the world trying many different cuisines and beverages from a variety of different festival booths. This festival is one of my personal favorites simply because of the wide variety of different foods you can try from all over the world (I’m a foodie, can’t you tell). The festival not only showcases worldwide foods but also had the return of their Eat To The Beat series; daily (if not weekly) concerts from different artists such as Joey Fatone & Friends, Boyz II Men, and 38 Special just to name a few. As much as I love music, I’m mostly going to be focusing on some of my personals favorite foods and drinks I had while attending the festival this year.

Foods

The Pickle Fries from The Fry Basket booth, located in the World Discovery area of Epcot (right in between Test Track and the Odyssey building). I’m a fan of fried pickles so when I saw pickle fries in the festival booklet this year, I knew I had to try them. The fried coating on the outside of the pickle spear was super crunchy. It wasn’t greasy and didn’t block out the taste of the dill pickle on the inside which was very nice considering a lot of fried foodies can be very greasy which can cause to take away from the flavor of the item being fried. The pickle fries come with dill ranch drizzled on top of them. The dill ranch was so yummy, just wished that you could ask for a side cup of it considering how delicious it was with the fries.

2. The Shaved Beef Ramen from The Noodle Exchange booth, located right outside of Mexico. This booth wasn’t there for the entirety of the festival, making it’s debut on August 15th. Ramen, really any kind of soup, has always been a food I have loved. This item came with shaved beef, shiitake mushrooms, pickled carrots and daikon radish, shaved peppers, and a soy egg all in a citrus-sesame broth. The portion was great for the size, in my opinion at least, the noodle to broth ratio was just right, and the shaved beef was very flavorful and easy to chew. If this booth returns next year to Food & Wine, I would highly recommend trying it out.

3. The Potato and Pea Samosa from the India booth, located in between China and the Outpost. With this festival, I wanted to adventure out of my comfort foods and try some new things throughout the months so when I heard about the samosas from a friend of mine, I decided to go give them a try and I was not disappointed. They had a nice crispy outside and a soft center. Although it got a little dry while eating, the coriander-lime cream saved it. Speaking of the cream, it was so delicious. I found myself trying to savor ever last scoop of it. It was beyond flavorful and really brought the dish a much needed moisture to go with the potatoes and peas.

4. The Boeuf Bourguignon from the France booth. This dish was by far my favorite out of all the dishes I tried at the festival. The short ribs that were braised in cabernet were just phenomenal! The meat was super easy to cut; falling apart with the ease of a plastic fork or spoon. The meat stayed super juicy and was filled with flavor. I was making sure none of the sauce/juice was left in the container. The potato puffs added a good starch to the dish. Taking a bite of them with the sauce was so yummy. I really hope to see this dish make a come back either next year to Food & Wine or to another festival here at Epcot because it was just wow!

5. The Canadian Filet Mignon from the Canada booth. Now, I am a big fan of a good filet mignon so when I saw this listed in the Food & Wine booklet, I knew I had to give it a try. The filet was served with sautéed mushrooms, Boursin Black Truffle & Sea Salt mashed potatoes, and a Boursin Black Truffle & Sea Salt whipped butter. It was cooked just how I liked it (medium-well) and smelt so delicious when I got the plate from the booth. I did the ultimate first bite of a piece of filet with some butter on top, a scoop of mashed potatoes and some sautéed mushrooms all together. It was definitely the move because it tasted so good all together (I ended up eating the rest of it doing the same combination).

6. The Lamington from the Australia booth located near the Port of Entry. Most of my favorites have been savory food items but I had to throw in my favorite sweet item into the mix as well. I tried this with my family when they came down to visit. Not knowing what it was at first, I didn’t know if I wanted to try it (I thought it was roasted lamb) but when I saw it in person, it looked so delicious. A lamington is a yellow cake with raspberry filling with chocolate frosting covered in toasted coconut (all things I really enjoy). My first bite made me good “mmhhmm” which in foodie terms means “it’s very good.” This was the one sweet food I kept going back to get after trying it for the first time.

Drinks

I’m not going to go into much detail about my favorite drinks that I had during Food & Wine, due to the fact I wanted to focus more on the food, but I wanted to do a honorary mention for them just in case someone would like to know what I enjoyed over the course of the festival.

This was the Apple Cinnamon cider from the Swirled Showcase booth. It’s a non-alcoholic drink and pair very nicely with the Mickey-shaped liquid nitro cake from the booth.

This was the Strawberry Rose Mimosa from the France booth. It was made with Pol Remy Sparkling Wine, Orange Juice, and Monin Strawberry Rose.

This was the hard cider flight from the Morocco booth. From left to right: Blake’s Hard Cider Co. Peach Party Peach & Blackberry Hard Cider, Keel Farms Raspberry Citrus Hard Cider, & 3 Daughters Brewing Fig Hard Cider.

This was the sangria flight from the Spain booth. From left to right: Viña Borgia Garnacha Red Sangria, Viña Borgia Rosé Sangria, & Viña Borgia Macabeo White Sangria.

This is the hard cider flight from the Odyssey building. From left to right: 3 Daughters Brewing Raspberry Lemonade Hard Cider, Bold Rock Peach Berry Hard Cider, & Blake’s Hard Cider Co. Tropicolada Hard Cider.

That concludes this blog post about the Epcot Food & Wine Festival 2023. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much I as did writing it. I hope you stick around to see what other new and exciting things I will be writing about soon! Bye for now friends!